circuit dead

[Stormin Mormon]

That seems to be a trend, on Usenet.

[terry]

[e-mail]:

. Yup: A 'short' is strictly speaking when electricty takes a path 'shorter' than it is supposed to. Often with consequeneces. Trouble is we have so many different terms for an 'open' circuit. e.g. Break, open, disconnect (or 'dis'), bad-connection, failed contact, wire-break, cut ..... etc. etc.

And that's the interesting thing about English and all the various forms of it. it is extremely flexible and we don't mind new variations and creating new and ingenious words or expressions. Every now and then someone will complain that their lingo is getting 'Americanized' or something. But their are many parts of the world where English is spoken and used very differently.

And along with say the British flair for understatement and clever use of double meaning Americans have a skill for clever and often brief expressions which sum up a situation or thing. e.g. "All jazzed up", or maybe, these days "Pimp my ride" ...............! A Brit. might describe a major fight as say "A slight dust-up".

A bad situation may be described as "Down the toilet" or "Cannned". Or something may be "Snookered" or "Creamed".

Then each generation will have our "Cool" or "Super" or "Smashing. And of course SNAFU. WWII.

There was a situation in WWII after the USA entered after Pearl Harbour, where the British had to advise their military 'From now on the term US shall be applied, respectfully, to the forces and/or members of our allies the United States'! Previously the term US had been used for Unserviceable or even Useless. International incident averted; maybe!

Along with regional words; here for example, an untrustworthy person is a 'Sleveen" (Slee-vene). Probably old Irish; "Make sure you get paid right away they are a right bunch of sleveens". Or exaggeration; "A wonder bad day" or "The perfect storm"

This ability and willingness is unlike some (e.g. The French who are concerned about the 'purity' of their language). English dictionaries for what might be called the 'official' words are much larger; quite apart from the multitude of local and 'slang' words we use.

Especially, for example, in Quebec, Canada. Where there is even legislation about signs being in French AND some other language. Imagine, say, a Vietnamese menu restaurant that 'must' also have their sign in French and those letters 'must' be bigger than the 'secondary' language symbols!

Consequently English is at the present a predominant world language, not to the 'exclusion' of any other of course and gets a lot of it's strength and utility from it's continuing ability to change and adapt while retaining many of it's colourful (or is that colorful?) words.

Ah well 'tomAtoe' or 'tomARto' or whatever; words, descriptions, etc. are great fun. Cheers.

[Stormin Mormon]

I was in such a place, couple years ago. The waitress would holler "order up" and the cook would put the food on the shelf, and reply "order up". Seems like one direction should be up, and other is down? Since it was just the two of them, it was less an issue.

[Phisherman]

Maybe. Reset the ground-fault device on an outlet if there is one. Check for voltage at the main, then trace to circuit. May be a loose wire, rodent chewing, etc.

[Tony]

Yes, that's actually a lot more like it! There are a lot of "Ho's" here too! Look at that sheet rock, it's got a ho here, and there. Damn even my shirt has a ho in it. There is also some magical power where locals can turn people into toads! Run out of gasoline and they might say "I toad you!" Seems every time I'm wrong about something they "toad" me. Isn't it bad enough that I made a mistake? Do they really have to Toad me also?

[Tony]

That was sometimes used up in eastern PA. I don't think it's used in TN, but if it was it would be "I'll have an oda of fries"

Everything is on the net somewhere.

[Tony]

innews: [e-mail]:

Words and languages continue to change and evolve. Your first word, "Yup", is only about 100 years old.

"The story of "yup" is a short one. "Yup" is simply an informal or dialectical variant of "yes." The only surprising thing about "yup" is that it apparently isn't older than it is. The earliest occurrence of "yup" in print found so far dates only to 1906, although it may have been in use orally for quite a while before then."

[Tony]

Around here it's often not the police, it's "The Law".

[Tony]

[grodenhiATgmailDOTcom]

Wow, my question started quite the thread... I bought a new outlet and replaced what was in there. It was likely the original from the

50's (it used the screws, not a back stab). I popped in a new outlet (and also used the screws and not the backstab) and everything is now working. Everything looked okay with the old outlet, all connections appeared okay, but something must have been up. Thanks!!

[Tony]

You lost me on that one, but it's "proly" not important. Most explanations for "proly" say it came from lazy people on the internet, too lazy to write probably. I guess they are proly right.

[The Daring Dufas]

innews: [e-mail]:

Around here we have the well known Ebonics dialect but we also have the Hillbonics dialect spoken by my Hillbilly kin through- out the Appalachia region.

TDD

[Stormin Mormon]

All the Briggs and Stratton small engine manuals I've read say to "renew" a part when any normal person would say "replace".

[Stormin Mormon]

Does the little guy from Star Wars (with the big ears) deliver fries? Yoda up!

[Stormin Mormon]

Glad you were able to switch / replace / renew / swap out the outlet. Thank you for letting us know how it worked out.

[Gary H]

innews: [e-mail]:

"yup" is fine, but there's a problem with "yo". It's supposed to mean yes but sounds a lot more like no.

[Red Green]

Tony wrote in news:7mg1muF3hpinhU1 @mid.individual.net:

"Proly" is a dead give away for an AOL teenie boppers. They think it's cool and have no idea why people call "Rooms" newsgroups.

[Red Green]

Gary H wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Well there's Yo and there's Yo Yo Then there's Yo Yo Yo

Each individually has its place. For example:

[Tony]

innews: [e-mail]:

When "yo" was really big I was living about an hour outside of Philadelphia. Almost all Toyota trucks tailgates where "fixed" by removing the paint on the T,o,t,a so it just said "yo". That was after they painted them all to say "Toy".

South philly "Yo" is like talking to "Rocky". Originally meaning "Hey You"

[Tony]

Hmm, weird. Does it say were they were printed?